Hothousing

For other uses, see Hothouse (disambiguation).

Hothousing is a form of education for children, involving intense study of a topic in order to stimulate the child's mind. The goal is to take normal or bright children and boost them to a level of intellectual functioning above the norm.^[1] Advocates of the practice claim that it is essential for the brightest to flourish intellectually, while critics claim that it does more harm than good and can lead a child to abandon the area studied under such a scheme later in life.

Development

It was Irving Sigel who first introduced the term "hothousing" in 1987^{[dubious – discuss]} after the greenhouse farming method, defining it as "the process of inducing infants to acquire knowledge that is typically acquired at a later developmental level."^[2] It was an analogy with the way vegetables are forced to ripen in this condition.^[1] Sigel, who worked for the Educational Testing Service in Princeton, used it to refer to a child who is drilled in academic fields such as reading and math long before other children begin learning them in school.^[3] The child is likened to a "hurried student" induced to acquire knowledge with emphasis on how it fits into a broader scheme of knowledge instead of acquiring bits of information.^[4]

In 1985, a symposium titled "The Hot Housing of Young Children; So Much, So Soon" was held in Philadelphia. Most presenters at the symposium were critical of hothousing, with one presenter, Brian Sutton-Smith, remarking "If you get hothoused, you end up being a rotten tomato—or at least a pallid tomato".^[5] In 1987,^[6]: 10 a Channel Four documentary series Hot House People was seen by millions of viewers, telling them that every child should be "programmed for genius" and has a potential intelligence greater than that of Leonardo da Vinci.^[7]

Some scholars have criticized hothousing, labeling it as early maturity of learning.^[8]

Famous people who underwent hothousing

• Charles S. Peirce
• Gordon Brown^[9]
• John Stuart Mill
• Aubrey de Grey^[10]
• Val McDermid^[9]
• Edith Stern^[6]
• Ruth Lawrence^[11]